Michelle Riggen-Ransom realized she didn't want to work for"corporate America" when she walked into a bathroom in Seattle.

She discovered one of her bank coworkers in a stall, pumpingbreast milk for her newborn twins. A new mother herself,Riggen-Ransom realized her friend didn't know the bank had a roomwhere she could more comfortably pump.

When she told her about it, the woman burst into tears.

That's when Riggen-Ransom realized she wanted a different kindof workplace and career.

She left the bank and started consulting. Then, she and herhusband, Sean Ransom, began searching for a new place to live. Withtheir young son, they wanted to be closer to her family on the EastCoast.

For the couple who met while working at Amazon.com, Rhode Islandhad what they wanted -- "a city and an ocean," she says.

Ransom worked remotely for Amazon from the Barrington home theybought in 2005.

New friend Pamela O'Hara, a mother of two, was consulting for acompany that asked her to find a robust computerized addressbook.

O'Hara had moved to Rhode Island in 2001 from Washington, D.C.,where she co-founded a Web technologies company. Her husband isfrom Providence, and they felt it was an ideal place to start afamily.

O'Hara clearly remembers the day she was painting a refrigeratorbox as a castle for her 2-year-old daughter's birthday party, allthe while fixating on the fact that she couldn't find the kind ofRolodex her client needed.

"I was hired to find the right thing, and it just bothered me somuch and I wasn't able to help them," she recalls.

An idea formed, and eventually she broached it to her newfriend.

Let's build our own such Rolodex, the women decided.

Ransom had the coding skills they needed, and they recruited himand an Amazon friend. Together the four built a software companythey named BatchBlue.

"And we almost couldn't figure out how people can live theirlives," he says. "We couldn't fathom how normal people had donethis, so we said, 'Let's build something where people can dothis.' "

Riggen-Ransom, now 42, set up her office in her newborndaughter's nursery.

"I was lucky," she says. "My first baby had colic, and she [mysecond baby] didn't. I felt like, 'Wow! I can get so muchdone.' "

Ransom, now 34, developed most of the code for their web-basedRolodex system in the Coffee Depot in Warren.

The software program they call Batchbook is designed to helpsmall businesses keep track of their clients and remember keydetails about them to improve their business.

They turned to family and friends to raise money and attractedangel-level investments, says O'Hara, who is now 41. She won'tdisclose how much they raised to start the company, but she says"less than $5 million."

BatchBlue is a classic example of the kind of entrepreneurialgrowth Rhode Island attracts, says Allan Tear, managing partner ofthe business incubator Betaspring. Entrepreneurs have relocatedhere because of the lifestyle Rhode Island offers, he says.

Tear moved here in 2002.

"I was looking for a city that I could get my arms around andsink my teeth into," he says.

Other entrepreneurs choose the state for the same reasons he,the Riggen-Ransoms and O'Hara did.

"It has all the cultural amenities of a large place, but in asmall place," Tear says, with walk-able, livable neighborhoods anda diverse capital city. "It matches an entrepreneur well. It's thekind of place where if you're scrappy and used to putting togetheryour own resources, I think the place welcomes you."

Plus, Providence is ideally located between Boston and NewYork.

Now, as Betaspring prepares to launch two start-up sessions thissummer, Tear and his partners are poring over hundreds ofapplications for 20 slots.

About 80 percent of them came from teams outside RhodeIsland.

BatchBlue demonstrated its Batchbook software at a ProvidenceGeeks gathering, events that attract the state's digital technologycommunity, and went on to launch it at DEMO in California in thefall of 2007.

The company now has "tens of thousands" of customers,Riggen-Ransom says. It outgrew its first Wayland Square office andis seeking another location.

When BatchBlue needed to invoice clients, the company searchedfor and found a software product to do the work. Glad they nolonger had to worry about how to invoice, they began to realizethey could fill another small business need.

With four other small businesses, they created one website threeyears ago to showcase all their products -- allowing smallbusinesses to find software products that work together tostreamline business.

What they call The Small Business Web has attracted AmericanExpress OPEN, the small-business division of American Express, asan official sponsor. Google Apps, a division of the search-enginegiant, has joined the Small Business Web, as have 200 othercompanies.

All the while, BatchBlue is striking the balance thatRiggen-Ransom longed for that day at the bank.

"We wanted to build a company that's conducive to living a fulllife and not being a cubicle slave," she says.

They pay what Ransom calls competitive salaries and start everyemployee off with six weeks of vacation. It doesn't matter whereand when employees do the work, as long as they get it done,Riggen-Ransom says.

The company declined to disclose revenue figures, butRiggen-Ransom says they hired six new employees last year, have oneposition available now and expect to launch a new product thisfall. O'Hara says they're "close to profitability."

The 16 people working at BatchBlue have 17 children under age14. Most of them are between 1 and 5 years old, Riggen-Ransomsays.

"We call them 'Batch babies,'" she says.Small-business webpartners

BatchBlue co-launched its effort to market software made bysmall companies that can work together to make life easier forother small-business owners. Many of the products integrate andwork well with each other. For example, a small-business ownercould mail that pile of business cards sitting on her desk toShoeboxed, which will digitize the information right intoBatchBlue's Rolodex program, Batchbook.

The founders

BatchBlue

The blue in this Rhode Island company's name represents theOcean State - "we are all water people," O'Hara says. And batchcomes from the computer term "batch processing," a way to economizecomputing power.

FreshBooks

A company in Toronto, Canada, designed to help small businessessend and manage invoices online.

MailChimp

An Atlanta company that helps small businesses design e-mailnewsletters, share them on social networks, integrate them withother services they use and track results.

Outright

A company in Mountain View, Calif., that automatically gathersand organizes transactions of small businesses.

Shoeboxed

A company in Durham, N.C., that simplifies business tasks likeexpense reporting, accounting, tax prep and contact management bydigitizing paper documents and organizing everything in a secureonline account.

kbramson@projo.com

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